Do you understand religious life? Do you understand the Franciscan spirit? This is not a game to him. This is who he is. He is a consecrated religious. You’re not going to take that out of him.
His behavior makes perfect sense to a religious. He’s being very much a Jesuit: simple, a working man, self-sufficient, one with the poor and the working class. Working class men don’t have servants retrieving their bags. They carry them.
I’m sorry, but so far, you’re the first person who has used the word “ridiculous”. Even the secular media is loving this man’s simplicity.
Let’s see:
- He begins his introduction to the people inviting them to pray for the Pope Emeritus.
- He asks the people to pray for him.
- He consecrates his papacy and the people of his diocese to the Blessed Mother on his visit to St. Mary Major.
- He reminds the cardinals at his first mass as pope that they must embrace the cross, confess Christ and embrace the poor.
- In his meeting with the cardinals he tells them something that you may find helpful. “Let us never give in to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day.”
- He sent a message to the Senior Rabbi of Rome inviting him to continue the work that the Church and the Jews have begun.
- He invited the Greek Orthodox Patriarch to his installation mass and the Patriarch accepted. It will be the first time in history that the Patriarch will set foot at the Vatican for the installation of a pope. He has never accepted the invitation before.
- He lives according to the poverty and simplicity of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius.
- He was involved in a face to face confrontation with the president of Argentina over same-sex marriage and abortion.
- He has embraced the people of the Diocese of Rome reminding them that he is not only the pope, but he is their bishop and is there for them.
- Faithful to his vow of poverty as a consecrated religious, he payed for his stay at the hotel, rather than have it given to him. He gave an example to religious men and women that even the pope does not cease to be a religious. On the contrary, the more public we are, the greater our obligation to be live what we vowed when we made solemn vows.
The list goes on. What more do you want? The man can’t walk on water, as far as we know. You cannot forget that this pope is not a secular priest. He is a religious. Everything that he does is a natural part of being a religious. Canon Law and theology give him the right to continue to live as a Jesuit, even if he is the Bishop of Rome. Do you want him to cease being a religious? We have always complained that the hierarchy is too secular. Now we have a pope who is very much the consecrated religious and you call him ridiculous. What do we want?
